Independent Wrestler Silver Ant’s Identity Revealed

Voices of Wrestling Host Joe Lanza Spoils Everything

Lanza, co-host of the Voices of Wrestling podcast, found himself in tepid water with the kids at UPROXX’s With Spandex Sunday afternoon having revealed a masked wrestler’s True Identity.

Apparently Danielle Matheson and Brandon Stroud took extreme issue with comments Lanza made on a recent Voices of Wrestling podcast where he outed a masked independent wrestler who works for CHIKARA as being someone who also works for other independent wrestling promotions without a mask!

According to Lanza, Silver Ant of CHIKARA’s The Colony faction is actually independent wrestler Tracy “Hot Sauce” Williams, and he should “put his ant costume back on,” because he’s devoid of charisma without it.

On their July 3rd episode, Lanza and co-host Rich Kraetsch were joking about fireworks mishaps on and around Independence Day in the United States, and Lanza joked that it was a surprise CZW hadn’t used some of what they were discussing as gimmicks in their hardcore matches.

This led to a more earnest discussion of CZW’s general lack of appeal for them, due to the matches consisting of either “Yard ‘Tard” guys, or being of the “GrappleFuck” variety of wrestling.

Lanza then recounted how he’d had to give up part way through one of the highly recommended match from one of CZW’s recent Dojo Wars shows, citing a match among Tracy Williams & Gulak vs. Frankie Pickard & Conor Claxton.

Lanza originally couldn’t even remember the wrestlers’ names until Kraetsch looked it up. Upon hearing Williams’ name, Lanza announced “ah, yes. The Silver Ant.” to which Kraetsch responded, “Uh oh,” seemingly indicating this might be seen as a no-no.

Lanza, undeterred, replied, “Oh, who the fuck cares.”

Sunday afternoon, we got our answer.

UPROXX cared, Joe. UPROXX.

Stroud and Matheson were none too pleased that people know that information, and took to twitter to voice their complaints.

For those who don’t know (and, hell, I didn’t) Brandon Stroud writes a column called the Best and Worst of Raw and is an editor for With Spandex, the wrestling sub-blog at UPROXX. He’s also been a ring announcer for Inspire Pro Wrestling.

Danielle Matheson is his assistant editor not he site, and is a self-proclaimed feminist wrestling fan. Her twitter header image is one of Amy Poeler as Leslie Knope flipping off the camera on Parks and Recreation, which should probably tell you everything you need to know about Danielle Matheson, since her author bio page at UPROXX is blank.

Matheson tweeted: “If you know an indie dude under a mask, congrats, keep it to yourself shitbag”

Stroud followed that up with a series of tweets, writing: “Really happy that calling yourself a voice of wrestling doesn’t actually make you a voice of wrestling. If you know who a masked wrestler is without the mask, congratulations, keep that shit to yourself. You are that shitty kid in kindergarten who has a bad home life and tries to ruin Santa and pro wrestling for the regular kids.”

When Lanza got wind of the heat, he wrote: “I’M SO MAD AT YOU FOR REVEALING A TERRIBLY KEPT SECRET THAT IM GOING TO DRAW ATTENTION TO IT UNTIL EVERYBODY KNOWS.”

Stroud, despite his “Santa” tweet earlier, appeared to back away that it was about exposing secrets and spoiling himself and Matheson, “…maybe don’t do that to wrestlers who don’t want their shit broadcast. That’s the difference. For the record, it’s not about “exposing the business,” it’s about being an ass about a guy I’ve worked with and respect.”

Lanza followed up by noting, “…just for the record, we cover more women’s wrestling than UPROXX.”

Les Moore is a veteran ex-journalist, columnist and content marketing strategist. With more than 15 years spent subscribing to pay wrestling newsletters or websites, and at one time boasting a subscription to every reputable pay wrestling news service available, from Wrestling Observer, Pro Wrestling Torch, plus 1Wrestling.com and, later, PWInsider, Moore provides a unique perspective on how wrestling writers ply their trade.

1 COMMENT

I’m firmly in Lanza’s corner here. Stroud and Matheson made more of mockery by tweeting it out. Don’t get me wrong, I love Joe and Rich’s 3hours shows, but how many chikara fan’s actually listen and how many chikara fans will this affect? Maybe what is said on a podcast is better left on the podcast.